Astragalus clevelandii

Cleveland's milkvetch, Cleveland's milk-vetch, Cleveland's milk-vetch

Family: Fabaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Conservation status: CNPS 4.3

Cleveland's milkvetch is a California native perennial found in the northern Coast Ranges in moist serpentine areas at elevations of 100 to 1,500 meters. Flowering from June to September, this plant produces white or cream-colored flowers in dense spike-like clusters with 20 to 100 reflexed blossoms. Growing with robust, bushy stems 30 to 100 centimeters tall that are entirely glabrous, it forms a leafy, erect plant. Its compound leaves feature 13 to 27 elliptic to oblanceolate leaflets, each 3 to 23 millimeters long, with nearly smooth upper surfaces and sparsely fine-hairy undersides. The distinctive reflexed fruit is stiff-papery, half-ovate, three-sided, and 4.5 to 7 millimeters long with raised upper sutures.

Habitat: Moist serpentine areas

Bloom period: Jun-Sep

Elevation: 100-1500 m

Bioregions: NCoRI, NCoRH.

California counties: Mendocino, Tehama, Napa, Lake, Colusa, San Benito, Sonoma, Yolo, Glenn

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.